359: Designing Inclusion from the Inside Out with Nani Vishwanath
Allyship in Action
In this episode of 'Show: Allyship in Action,' Nani Vishwanath, a strategic leader focused on equity, inclusion, and belonging, discusses th
Key takeaways
- DEI initiatives that are externally driven (e.g., during 2020 or under recent political attacks) tend to be unsustainable and vulnerable to deprioritization when conditions change.
- True sustainability in inclusion work comes from an internal 'why'—a deep, organization-specific rationale tied to strategic success, relevance, and innovation.
Main topics
- Sustainable DEI strategies
- Internal vs. external drivers of inclusion work
Notable quotes
'The money is truly an outcome of better design.'
'If it's not making you better, reevaluate the work.'
Conclusion
Organizations must move beyond reactive, externally driven DEI efforts by anchoring inclusion in an internal
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, Lister. We've got Nani Vishwanath, who is a strategic leader dedicated to evolving how organizations approach equity, inclusion, and belonging. She's a consultant with The Current Collective and through her previous work at LimeAid. Nani has spent years guiding companies away from performative measures towards sustainable systemic change. She's recognized for her ability to bridge the gap between high-level strategy and human-centered execution, fostering environments where authentic belonging is a lived reality rather than... just a corporate goal. And I had the pleasure of watching Nani present at last year's International Allyship Day and gave a whole business case and human case for inclusion with amazing case studies around a clothing line and like an accessory line that her employer created. It was very, very cool. So Nani, I'm so excited to hear what's on your mind this year. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited for the conversation. Same. I know you're always like thinking ahead and seeing kind of the metaphorical tea leaves. Speaker 1 (1:08) Obviously, anyone in inclusion work knows the pendulum has swung very hard in the opposite direction as it did in 2020. And I just keep hoping for a moment where we're like settle somewhere in the middle, like these extremes don't feel healthy or helpful or sustainable to me. What are you seeing right now? Like, where are we? Speaker 2 (1:27) I definitely agree on the pendulum swing and have a lot of empathy for folks in the field. It's been a roller coaster. Honestly, in the last six years, there's been a lot. And one of the things I've been thinking about is there's two moments in these last six years. One, obviously, with 2020 and a resurgence around DEI and organizations. And then again in 2025, with this administration's attacks on DEI, both have been very strong external forces and both have caused organizations to react. to those external forces. What's interesting about that is that those reactions have then sort of set the path for how the organizations model DEI. So in 2020, we saw a lot of reactive, I would say, wanting to be on the right side of history, organizations really rushing to put something together with really ambitious strategies to tackle systemic racism, you know, topics that Many folks have been working for decades and decades on, and they just weren't sustainable or durable strategies. As we know, so many organizations put people in leadership positions around DEI, but without much in the way of resources or support. And a lot of those folks have since been removed from those roles. It was all based on this external pressure. And then kind of parallel to that in a very different way, last year when we saw the administration's threats around DEI, organizations once again reacted, wanting to change the names of things, wanting to remove the work altogether, wanting to reorg so that they could minimize risk in the most effective way. So they thought, and again, it was all based on this like external force. And I wonder now when I start to see DEI roles pop back up on the job market, what does it look like to root this work more on an internal foundation of what an organization actually needs versus what the external forces are predicting? And I think that's an interesting tension that I am curious how organizations might react to. Speaker 1 (3:43) Yeah, it reminds me of like my business school days when we did, we put out like a pestle analysis. It was like political, economic, social, technology, legal, maybe economic is the last E. Yeah, something else. But it's like, this is not a great market. Like the business nerd inside me having a DEI business for the last 12 years has been like. the external forces are very much against our work. Speaker 2 (4:15) And so Speaker 1 (4:15) this framing of like external versus internal, because if you're relying on external forces, you're going to be on a roller coaster ride forever. And it's never going to work because you're always going to be meandering with the direction of society and things that we can't control like AI. Speaker 1 (4:35) other economic forces. So I love this focus on the internal. Tell me more, Nani, about that. Like if an organization is internally focused on inclusion work, what does that look like? Speaker 2 (4:48) You know, a couple of things I think need to be true. One, the why behind it needs to be really, really solid. It doesn't need, it should not be because it's the right thing to do. It should not be because it's it will make people feel better or something that lacks real connectivity to that organization itself. There needs to be clarity from leaders about why this particular organization is invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion. all parts of that acronym, right? And what it means for that organization's success. And I think one thing that's critical is it should not only be about the internal culture of an organization. I think a lot of organizations believe that DEI should live in HR and should be purely a people function. But the truth is that for people to trust an organization, for people to feel like they're included, for it to feel relevant, that's important for your customers and your consumers as well. And so how are you really thinking about those tenants, not only about your culture, but about what you produce as a deliverable, as an organization? And I think that connectivity is often lacking. And so the why behind DEI gets pretty fuzzy, gets pretty fluffy. And then that's pretty easy to deprioritize when times get tough. Speaker 1 (6:12) Yeah. Yeah. It's, I heard this great way of talking about it. Listeners, forgive me on the attribution error here, but it was like DEI is a row, not a column, meaning it's not like HR or the people department or like wherever you can nest it under something. It goes across all. functional areas, all lines of business. And yeah, I mean, in hindsight, yeah, the why wasn't very strong, the structure around it and resourcing wasn't very strong. It reminds me of, you know, Simon Sinek's work with like the why in the middle, and then the what and the how are the rings that we work on next. But when you have a right. the right why aligned with your organization and a very unique one, not a, we hear about all humans watered down, anyone can say kind of thing, but like why we uniquely care, then the what and the how become a lot easier. But I spent a lot of time with companies in 2020, 21, and to some degree, 2022. Trying to craft that why. And I got to say, Nani, it was really hard to pull that out of leaders. And I don't know what it is about our work that suggests it's only for women or black and brown people or folks with disabilities or the queer community. It's for everyone. And I think as long as leaders, especially senior leaders that are overrepresented as white, straight, hetero, males, non-disabled, all the things. As long as they don't see themselves as a part of the work, we're really going to struggle with that. Have you had any success like engaging senior leaders in that? Why or what advice would you give to organizations that a senior leadership just still doesn't see it as part of their job? Speaker 2 (8:01)